This is so dumb it is "get someone fired" dumb. This is going to hit the media as political correctness run amok. I can just hear "Is Apple going to ban history books, too?". Sure, its ok for a half-naked women with a sword to slice up orks, but don't you dare show war-game with actual sides. Is Axis & Allies going to be banned?
I think the decision is absurd too, but how does this generalize to history books? They don't portray one group as "the enemy" and good practice is to actively avoid that.
I think they do, although that's probably fine. Germany was "the enemy" of the Soviet Union, as was Japan. France was "the enemy" of pretty much everyone else in the Napoleonic wars. There's nothing wrong with labeling someone as "the enemy" of someone else, as long as you don't include a value judgement.
I doubt this game labels "the vile Germans" as "the enemy of the noble Soviets".
> 15.3 “Enemies” within the context of a game cannot solely target a specific race, culture, a real government or corporation, or any other real entity.
If you could play as both sides it seems like they would allow it. While this rejection seems irrational, I don't think the point is that Germans and Russians are targeted, but that they are depicted as the only enemy.
Every conflict has at least two sides, and it's unthinkable that any game doesn't offend a group of people. However, it seems more reasonable that they should require "fairness" in the sense that both sides should be playable. This takes a game from having a perceived ideological stance to being more neutral, and I think that's the whole point here.
Russia and Germany are two separate nations. Nations that were on opposite sides of WWII, no less. I don't see how the game "solely" targets one specific group.
Sure, but they were on opposite sides for most of the time, and they inflicted horrendous casualties on each other (Germany suffered almost as many casualties in a single battle in the east as the entire war in the west, and Russia more so) and both committed horrible massacres on the civilian population of any neutral, conquered or enemy nation.
Given the numbers, saying Russia and Germany were on opposite sides in WW2 seems pretty accurate to me.
Why presume that the context of the game is the entire war? A lot of games and other media relating to the war focus on specific points in the war, and so your last statement doesn't necessarily apply to the game given the information conveyed in the article, specifically regarding the implication of historical inaccuracy.
why? It's the game's name, and it says a lot. It looks like a tabletop wargame, and they are many times named like that.
I believe it's usually because they focus on a single battle, a specific zone and/or a specific time. That title helps the buyer quickly know what the game is about (Wargamers are, many times, history buffs)
[EDIT] I stand corrected. I sometime get lost in the tree-like way the replies are showed.
I should have been more clear. I was responding to "Not all of WW2 - they jointly invaded Poland", the reference to Katyn, and in fact the entire ensuing discussion which ignores the fact that the game is set in a period in which the two countries were at war, in favor of demonstrating who has command of the most precise irrelevancies.
Yes, all of WW2 they were opposing each other. Just because they split Poland doesn't mean they weren't enemies, it was nothing more than opportunism.
While Hitler was busy carving up Poland, he was planning the entire time for how to bring Russia to its knees. At no point did he plan for anything but eventual confrontation with Russia.
If I give you a ride home today, while plotting your demise for tomorrow, we're not pals.
That's hindsight. They were allies. They signed a pact, and they traded. True Hitler was plotting to invade Russia, but from the Russian perspective Germany was not the enemy.
I wonder how non-Stalin or non-Communist Russia would have done vs. the Germans. Purging military leadership wasn't helpful, but industrial production was.
Some of us would, perhaps. Not the British though (although you have to wonder about what would happen if Germany got the bomb first). America would definitely be speaking whatever the hell the wanted to.
If only one nation is playable in the game, the other nation is singled out as "the enemy". If you can only play Germany, Russia is your enemy in the entire game.
However, I think that's a silly distinction to make - you can't just swap nations in every game, since the game mechanics for managing a Soviet nation or army could well be different from those of managing the 3rd German Empire.
It does if the player can only play as one of the factions. Especially if the factions are really called "Germans" and "Russians". The war was fought between the Axis and the Soviet Union, which included plenty of nations besides Germany and Russia. Also, "Germans" and "Russians" are not the same as "Germany" and "Russia" (there were Germans, for example, who fought against Germany too).
But the article doesn't say much about the game, so I don't know if this was the case.
Yes it looks like you are correct. By 1942 they were fighting against each other. I don't know what the game allows, but reading the article I got the impression that those entities were only depicted as enemies. If that's not the case then it appears to be a misapplication or mistake according to the app store rules.
Imagine you've got a game where the goal is to liberate prisoners from concentration camps being operated by a particular race. You're telling me Apple would be more likely to approve it if you could play as a defender of the camp and the attackers are the enemy.
We like having "bad" people to kill in our killing games. Having some moral (imaged or not) highground makes us feel justified in our killing. If we remove the perceived ideological stance and make the game more neutral doesn't that make the violence pointless? I like to feel good about my violence damn it!
I concede that the point you make is right. However...
DO NOT create computer games about the Holocaust. Even if well-intended, this would be incredibly tasteless.
One can certainly debate whether or not games about WW2 are problematic, but in the case of the Holocaust... trust me. It doesn't matter how elaborate and well-thought-through your argument for making the game is. It is still tasteless.
There are many films and books about the Holocaust, I don't think games should be treated any differently.
I do agree with the general sentiment that making games about the holocaust is probably not a good idea, but if someone did it and did it well, I wouldn't hesitate to play it. Not all games have to be trivial.
Agreed. Just throwing in some concentration camps and gas chambers in a tower defense game would be unneeded and tasteless. However an realistic game where you had to escape from a concentration camp or aid escapees that employed a lot of stealth(Thief) elements with realistic/gritty world (DayZ comes to mind but without Zombies) and the sequences could be based on some of the true life stories.
Apple sells these products (and takes a 30% cut), so they have some responsibility for what they are selling. They don't want to offend anyone, so they made a list of rules. Their review team interprets rules literally.
We may shake our heads when it comes to WW2, but it is really a grey area.
What if the game was depicting a war between present day religious or political groups? What if it was a game between heterosexuals and homosexuals? What about a racist theme?Would that be OK?
Certainly, some people would be offended. So where do you draw the line if you don't want to offend anyone with the products you sell?
I don't even closely consider this a grey area, unless you consider everything a grey area.
This isn't a disputed current-day event. This is historic, and we're not even dealing with some (even remotely) controversial topic like say concentration camps here.
If you're gonna reject apps that might remotely, possibly, offend some tiny portion of your customers, you might as well just shut down.
They started out as enemies of the Allies, then they became enemies of the Axis powers when they changed their allegiance. And when they were pretending to be friends of the Polish people under Nazi rule, they intentionally failed to show up as promised to help out with the Warsaw uprising so that the Polish uprising leaders would die and not get in the way when they instituted communism in Poland (I saw the new "Warsaw Rising Museum" this past summer). Brings to mind the phrase "with friends like these, who needs enemies?" But to set clearly set the record straight, the Russians were indeed the enemy at some point no matter which side you were on.
The Soviet Union was always a US ally during the period of the war in which the US was a combatant. With 26,000,000 or so dead, [1] it is hard argue that they put any lower value on lives in Warsaw than its own citizens.[2]
Russia definitely did not promise to help out with Warsaw uprising and actively discouraged it. Uprising was a coup by Polish leaders to liberate Warsaw before Russian army arrives to be in a better negotiating position after the end of war. Soviet Union was under no obligation to help anti-soviet elements to fight Germans - enemy of my enemy is my friend is true only up to the point.
I don't know that you can back up your first sentence. I'm pretty sure the museum in Warsaw claims that they did plan to work together. Also, the museum shows part of a TV show from after the war which served as Soviet propaganda. The TV show rewrote history to say the Soviets fought alongside them. My Polish friend is in his mid-30s like me and explained how they were still showing this old TV program when he was a child in the 80s. Now he knows it was a lie.
Tell that to the Poles, the Finns and other nations that were invaded by the Russians.
Only after Germany invaded Russia, Stalin decided that they are an enemy that should be dealt with.
Sorry "depict historical accuracy". Seriously? It is a game, it doesn't depict anything accurately.
I don't find offensive, but I can that people would; I don't think a WW2 game is particularly amusing for the people who fought in the war and saw their friends die.
Really? Would you think that those people would also be offended by mentioning the war[1], making fun of "Mr. Hilter"[2] or the idea of Kamikaze Scotsmen[3]?
Also, it is a fact that most games only let you play as one faction that usually have some very bad luck[4][5][6], be them real or not.
If this game was a Wikipedia article, it'd be tagged as saying that it doesn't have a neutral POV. Who do you think the Russans, Germans and Japanese thought were the enemy? Certainly not each other.
Sure, it's a gray area. But do you think Apple would reject a game depicting the Roman Empire fighting of the Huns? Or the Aztecs vs the Inca? Or is that OK, because we're not familiar with a current group of people that strongly identifies with any of these "enemies"?
I feel like historical content should get a free pass for some of these rules. They'd still have to make a judgement call to decide if this is a racist or otherwise offensive game though.
For instance, a historical game like Europa Universalis[1] allows you to kill, oppress or convert tens of thousands of Muslims or Christians, but that doesn't make it an offensive game. A game like Ethnic Cleansing[2] only allows you to kill dozens or hundreds of people would probably not be allowed though.
If it's going to be a policy, it should be a strict policy. This is the kind of thing where a "there's no room for interpretation" stance is probably appropriate - this is tricky, tricky territory, and even though a game simulating a real war will always have real entities as the enemy, I can respect a policy that is implemented to the letter in order to avoid the sort of really horrible games that could enter the App Store without it.
I'd prefer Apple to be entirely open and then only remove apps once flagged and reviewed, but if they're going to be the way they are, I prefer them to be consistent.
First they came for the mkv decoding video apps, and I said nothing. Then they came for the WWII simulation games, and I said nothing. Then they came for the alternative browsers, so I switched to Android.
Here's my big problem. Why do books, movies, and television not have to face this kind of crap? Why don't game developers get the same privileges as other media? Because its interactive? That's a load of crap. Because its immersive? Other media should be insulted by that assertion.
If you're a developer and you don't think your fellow developers should get the same protections as other media, then why? How does Apple sell "Patton" or "Midway" and not this?
You think books, movies, and television don't face this kind of crap? Publish a book that says the wrong things about the wrong people and you are toast (especially in countries where, for example, truth is not a defense, such as Britain and Australia). Movies will do all kinds of things (notably eliminating sex scenes, especially where women are enjoying themselves) to get more permissive ratings from the MPAA. And television is completely nutty (the writers of Hill Street Blues invented an entire lexicon of curses and epithets in order to have police have vaguely plausible dialog that could get past network censors).
Does Apple subject each television show, movie, and book to a "contains content or features that include people from a specific race, culture, government, corporation, or other real entity as the enemies in the context of the game, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines" rule?
Well, I can't comment on what Apple allows or does not allow in terms of TV shows and movies, although it's pretty clear that -- for example -- Apple does not allow porn. The fact is that the deluge of Apps is not duplicated anywhere else -- I read somewhere that a new Flappy Bird clone is released every 24s -- I don't think there are as many TV shows to contend with.
The point is that everyone publishing stuff in a store probably has to deal with censorship etc. at some point. Nintendo famously forced LucasArts to remove a puzzle from a game because the solution involved sticking a hamster in a microwave.
So, no, they do not subject anything else to a similar requirement. Volume doesn't give them a pass. The thought process that software developers are less protected than authors is an insulting.
"No Porn" is a requirement they impose on ALL media, so it fair and respectful of the work done by software developers. The thinking that an Harlequin romance novel is somehow more artistic and worthy of protection than something like "Last of Us" is bogus.
Basically TV shows, etc., are regulated externally, so Apple doesn't need to bother as much. Games are open season, and someone has to police standards. I think you're blaming Apple for trying to manage a difficult situation and sometimes making mistakes (which everyone who does similar things also does -- again, see MPAA ratings and ESRB ratings for mainstream games)
We never cared about the App Store acceptance guidelines before, because most apps got accepted anyway. Still, there's an intrinsic risk that you take when you push a program to the store, in that YOU do not have control over how your app turns out. Apple has final authority on any changes, and it's really a restrictive environment to be in.
It didn't matter then, but with billions of applications now in the marketplace, the drawbacks of having a fully closed environment for applications are becoming painfully obvious. http://www.paulgraham.com/apple.html
He said that five years ago, has their bottom line suffered? Do developers now start with an Android app and then go to iOS? This current "outrage", which will almost certainly be overturned on appeal, was caused by a single reviewer and the fact that Apple's guidelines are intentionally vague leaving them wide latitude to control the App Store for brand protection.
Just because their strengths outweigh this weakness doesn't make it not a weakness. Has their bottom line suffered? I would wager yes. Just because they're still dominant doesn't mean this hasn't hurt them.
This "outrage" was not caused by a single reviewer. It was caused by the capricious and unwieldy app review system that Apple instituted years. IT was caused by the fact that a single reviewer can fuck things up publicly for the entire company. It is a problem of process, not of an individual.
Developers start with iOS because it's a better development environment and because the iPhone is a household name, while there are scores of different Android devices. Your argument is irrelevant. The point is that Apple's control over its ecosystem can't be a net benefit in the long term because it doesn't give developers enough breathing room to scale or expand. You're left at the mercy of Apple's approval staff.
Just a friendly reminder: Apple has hundreds of reviewers, and turn over is undoubtedly high. The reviews are highly subjective with the Guidelines being what they are and worded how they are, you're going to have different interpretations among the pool of reviewers. Asking for consistency out of that system is insane. That's why there's an appeal process. Taking to the internets to bitch about it and inciting the masses makes headlines, but is just bad business.
I could not possibly care less how Apple is organized internally.
A company should not expose their internal bullshit to the outside world. Apple set this system up. If they are unable to run it consistently then they have only themselves to blame. They should either fix it or scrap it.
> Taking to the internets to bitch about it and inciting the masses makes headlines, but is just bad business.
Nah, bitching publicly works, all those companies are incredibly sensitive to media stories. Always bitch before the appeals process, make sure their PR department notice you.
Taking to the internets to bitch about it and inciting the masses makes headlines, is just the only thing that realistically works. It's unprofessional to use highly subjective guidelines.
I immediately thought of Bulge[1], a great WW2 strategy game depicting the eponymous battle. I thought it would support the Tank Battle developer's complaint, but actually it doesn't: the combatants are 'Axis' and 'Allies' - no mention of countries.
And there you go, more arbitrary decisions that should have no place in an "app store". That's why a platform always needs to allow at the very least side-loading of apps, even if it makes it difficult enough for "normal users" to do that, for security reasons. For situations like these when the vendor starts banning apps for their own bogus reasons.
> As I’ve said before, the problem here isn’t the guidelines themselves: hate speech has no place on the App Store.
If you agree with policing hate speech, you have to accept the consequences.
Of course the 1st amendment currently only limits the actions of the US Govt. and corporations are free to ignore it. But this situation can't last.
In a world where every expression of speech utilizes a medium provided by a private corporation, free speech needs to be enforced at the corporate level.
Much like a corporation isn't free to discriminate against a person on the basis of race or religion for hiring purposes, it shouldn't be able to refuse to publish something because it finds the content objectionable.
Apple has every right to only publish material they find suitable, and that's exactly how it should be.
The problem is that Apple has set it up so that what I can install on my hardware is determined by them. I don't get to make my own choice. Apple makes it for me.
The solution is to mandate an option for jailbreaking or sideloading on users' devices. Then Apple's opinion doesn't matter anymore. They can filter however they want, and I can install whatever I want, just as it should be.
Forcing Apple to publish things they don't want to publish is going about it all wrong.
Your solution would be a welcomed first step... However the "free market" counter argument is "just buy Android", and it's unclear whether Apple's hardware is "yours"; aren't you renting it from your network operator? Are you free to resell it?
Anyway I maintain that if all of publishing is controlled by private companies that are not answerable to the 1st amendment, then there is not much free speech anymore.
The argument that private companies should be free to not publish whatever they want for any reason applies just the same to hiring; and yet everyone is ok with the fact that companies are not free to refuse to hire someone for any reason: some reasons are acceptable, some are not.
I'm just advocating that there should be acceptable reasons to not publish something (it's bad) and unacceptable ones (we don't like what it says).
This is ridiculous, you want to force my company to host your hate speech? Bullshit, you're now removing my rights, to enable your own. It's the internet, build your own platform and say whatever you want.
I'm not really a fan of this libertarian "My house, my rules" approach. To a person voicing a controversial (or non-controversial or just plain stupid) opinion it does not matter who exactly silences them. The US constitution might protect from the government, but ultimately it's not exclusively the evil government suppressing one or the other thing, and in the end it don't ever matter who did it. In the end a thing that was considered so important government (usually completely sovereign) might not touch it, goes away.
And no, this is not the internet, it's a iphone and the apple appstore, I can't build my own. Cydia does not count, that exploits a bug, that could be closed anytime.
It's similar to how I would expect my ISP to not block the websites of competing ISPs. That's forcing the ISP to have content move through its system that it may not like.
It's the same logic behind forcing private businesses to ban smoking on their premises, and the same logic behind forcing photographers, bakers and florists to provide artistic services to celebrations they abhor: 'if you don't want to do X for everyone, according to the rules and regulations we have promulgated, then don't do X!'
The sad thing is, most folks don't want liberty for others.
I certainly don't want unchecked liberty for others, or myself. I want intelligent, compassionate, and humane liberty, meaning that you can do whatever you want as long as you're not hurting someone else.
Say I take the grocery example from above. And I have unbridled liberty, and I now don't allow any black people to shop there because in the original texts of Mormon, the lord cursed Cains seed, and the black skin curse was to identify the cursed. Now if there are 30 grocery stores in town, who cares. But say I'm in a small town, and there are only two, and we're both Pre-1978 Mormon believers. Now black people in the town can only eat at the Chick fil a. Well, Chick fil a decides to also have this policy, and now there is no place for the black populace to eat. The only option to the black people is to open their own store, except no one will sell them the food, and no one will sell them the land, and no one will sell them... anything. I effectively own the black populous because I can get them to work for food. Oh, and it's not racism, it's religion.
I don't care what ideology you have, it must not suppress human rights.
UPDATE (Friday 14 March): Maybe they’re reading Pocket Tactics in Cupertino? Andrew Mulholland just wrote in to say that Apple re-reviewed the game and have reversed their decision without Hunted Cow Studios having to make any changes. Common sense prevails. Tank Battle: East Front 1942 will be on the App Store tonight at midnight.
It's amazing how people accept censorship when it comes from Apple or other corporations (as evidenced by the sales and usage of iPhones and similar technology) yet complain when the government does it. What's even harder to accept is the extent of damage that a corporation like Apple does in this case. Through arbitrary censorship, they're essentially eliminating other businesses' ability to exist. They're essentially saying, "develop at your own risk." A company who has poured a ton of money and development resources into a project that falls within guidelines can no longer publish their product because of the invisible guidelines at Apple and their rigidity. One would think they would at least have an appeals process to deal with all the mistakes.
EDIT: With arbitrary approval like this, what is the incentive for a business to take such a huge risk?
It isn't really censorship in a strict big-controlling-bigbrother-government sense.
If a government is censoring, they block completely 100%. You will not be able to freely say what you want.
Here, you can definitely say and do what you want (within the law) -- Just not on an iPhone.
If you own a website with a forum on it, and you don't allow certain links to dubious content in the comments, that isn't really censorship either, is it?
I'd say this is definitely censorship. It's censorship chosen by those who choose to purchase an iPhone. It negatively affects those who have an iPhone and especially those developing for the iPhone. Yes, you can make an argument that one doesn't have to own or develop for the iPhone, but for the developer, that's over 40% (I believe) of the mobile phone market in the US. That's a huge customer base to ignore simply because it's risky to develop iPhone apps due to Apple's censorship.
Also, iPhone apps are generally useless outside of the app store. Sure, someone with enough technical know-how can install them, but for all intents and purposes, they have no value if they're being censored. That is very different from moderating a website. There are billions of websites and only one app store.
Honestly, it really is right there in the guidelines. I understand many people don't agree with them (they do seem overly restrictive), but this shouldn't have been a surprise.
It doesn't make sense to me when developers make apps that are clearly against the app store guidelines and then complain that they get rejected.
I totally agree. Given the historical context (and assuming it's reasonably in line with history) I think it should be allowed.
I understand why Apple wouldn't want to sell "Stomp the Muslim" or "Nuke France" on their store, but some of the things Apple is preventing may be good social commentary. People were talking about Papers Please yesterday, would that be allowed? There have been a few social justice indie-games over the last few years, I doubt many of them would have been allowed.
This is the kind of thing that gets blown out of proportion. App reviewers are pushed to review as many as possible in a short window of time, and then make a small mistake like this. Not that big of a deal.
"Rocky IV depicts Oceania and Eurasia as enemies despite the two never engaging in an armed conflict. Due to historical in accuracies Itunes Minitruth subsection histosec has re-edited Rocky IV because Oceania and EastAsia have always been at war. Oceania and Eastasia have always been at war."
This is new history rewriting present in EU, Germans don't want to be the bad guys anymore, so they ask that formulations from WW I celebrations change. They want us to forget their role in two world wars and would like to reframe those as anything but what it was.
I am curious where you get your information from. Got any source demonstrating the 'the Germans' - which I assume is meant to describe either the majority opinion or the official government stance - want to rewrite history regarding WWII? Or asking for anyone to 'forget their role' in it?
Yes, there is big push to redefine everything WW I and II, Merkel officially asked English to tone down celebrations of WW I and those toning down went so much that Russians decided not to participate in charade altogether which was to happen in France and will organize remembrance events on their own.
There are attempts to pin start of WW I on Serbs, like they could start the war. So you see where I am going.
So, if it helps, I respect and frankly love german culture and philosophers especially, but honestly since that WW I, germans developed this cycle of going up, being destructive, being destroyed. I see that happening again.
Apologies for the late reply. Do you have a source for that request of Merkel's?
You specifically mentioned "forget their role in two world wars". That is not the same as stating the - historically accurate notion - that Germany was not the sole party responsible for WWI. A major instigator, possibly the most important, but my no means the only one.
No mainstream politician in Germany denies German responsibility for WWII.
It's ok, HN doesn't provide notifications, a quick google turned out this link, not the most respectable source I will admit, but I remember it being fairly well reported at the time.
